Gastronationalism, Globalization, Technology, and Zeppelins in the Lithuanian Imagination Diana Mincyte, New York University

Unusual Ingredients: Gastronationalism, Globalization, Technology, and Zeppelins in the Lithuanian Imagination Diana Mincyte, New York University Abstract This project focuses on a Lithuanian dish—a potato dumpling—known as the “zeppelin” to examine the construction of national food at two different historical moments—the turn of the 20th and the 21st centuries. In examining nation building as an everyday practice that is embedded in global cultural, economic, and technological transformations, this paper is an attempt to rethink a particular instance of East European nationalism beyond its current designation as agrarian, historical, and reactionary to understanding dynamic tensions surrounding its reproduction. First, I argue that the birth of national food in the 1920s and 1930s was deeply embedded in the processes of modernization and industrialization that allowed new ways to imagine the global, and, second, my research demonstrates that experiences of alterity continue to permeate national imaginaries in the Europeanising Baltics. Nationalism, food culture, modernization, history of technology, Lithuania In her recent article, Michaela DeSoucey (2010) introduces the term “gastronationalism” to denote a particular set of nation-making practices that draw on food as a medium for expressing ideas of patrimony, distinction, and collective belonging. Zooming in on foie gras as an example of French gastronationalism, DeSoucey shows how economic interests, state institutions, and local food practices converged into powerful performances of French nationalism in the context of the deepening pan-European universalism and globalization. DeSoucey goes further to suggest that, paradoxically, such food-based nation building in France itself relies on globalization of food markets and universalization of food branding claims. While DeSoucey’s research tells a story of success in negotiating external pressures to reproduce French nationalism, Zsuzsa Gille’s (2011) examination of foie gras economy in Hungary paints a bleaker picture to argue that globalization and Europeanization work against Hungarian producers and the interests of the Hungarian nation state. Gille’s research reveals how universalist claims to ethical treatment of animals and institutional arrangements in the European Union (EU) paved the way for a small Austrian-based animal rights NGO to halt foie gras production in entire all of Hungary for extended periods of time, and hold nation state-based institutions hostage. In highlighting the uneven grounds in European food politics, Gille’s project adds an important power dimension to understanding connections between food and nationalism as embedded in geopolitics and a global political economy. Unlike French producers, Hungarians could not deflect critiques framed in universalist terms, and, as a result, they were stigmatized and presented as negligent at best and immoral, at worst. Although Gille’s analysis does not explicitly elaborate on gastronationalism, her research complicates the idea of the alignment of transnational markets, nation state, supranational institutions, and national identities in producing national culinary tastes. It also hints at the issues related to how universalist ideas about what constitutes progress, enlightenment, morality, and modernity become problematic for national subjects in the post-socialist East European contexts where identities are reconstituted not only as a reaction to global and local politics, but also in relation to the imaginaries of backwardness and provincialism (Todorova 1997, Wolff 1994). Anthropology of East Europe Review 29(2) Fall 2011 1 Anthropology of East Europe Review 29(2) Fall 2011 Building on this line of argumentation, this article is concerned with experiences of alterity in East European nation building, and particularly how it is manifested in the national culinary cultures. Indeed, how do the markings of “lack of civilization” or “underdevelopment” play into the production of national subjectivities and their performances? How are these experiences manifesting themselves in particular forms of cultural and material reproduction? What is the political economy of such national economies? More broadly, how are geopolitical inequalities, global imaginaries, and local subjectivities of alterity negotiated in performances of national identities? Building on the case of the Lithuanian national dish, a potato dumpling called “zeppelin,” I seek to argue that experiences of alterity in Lithuania—and potentially in other post-socialist contexts—produced a particular temporal and geographic orientation in national subjectivities that drew legitimacy by looking into the future and beyond the geographic bounds of the claimed national territory. I hope to show that in addition to inwards-looking nationalist claims to shared collective history, land, bloodlines, language and culture, there were other potent cultural imaginaries that focused on technological progress, science and modernity far beyond that collective, as captured in Charles Piot’s recent analysis of experiences of poverty in West African societies and his evocative notion of “nostalgia for the future” (2010). To be sure, this article is not an attempt to make far-reaching claims about the nature of Lithuanian nationalism. Rather, in tracing the historical trajectory of a national dish, this paper is an attempt to rethink a particular instance of East European nationalism beyond its current designation as agrarian, historical, and reactionary to understanding dynamic tensions surrounding its reproduction. By so doing, I hope to recast nationalism and its reincarnations in Lithuanian national cuisine as drawing on multiple conflicting visions, political imaginaries, existing practices, and cultural resources, many of which historically proved to be disturbingly exclusionary, and continue to be so. I also hope to highlight the significance of class and social inequalities that cut across national identities and that are made particularly visible in culinary practices. In short, this is a story of the use of unusual ingredients in reproducing transnational geopolitical hierarchies and national identities situated in them. To advance these themes, the paper focuses on two historical moments, the early-20th century when predominantly peasant populations were incorporated in the global systems of economic exchange and became ethnic citizens of nation states, and the more recent developments in post-socialist Lithuania when the opening of the borders and fast-paced globalization pose new economic and political challenges to East European nationalisms. This paper also briefly touches on the evolution of zeppelins during the Soviet period spanning from 1940 to 1991, while recognizing that this topic deserves a much more in-depth inquiry into socialism’s particular configuration of national politics and global imaginaries. In light of this, the rest of the paper is organized around seven sections. The first two sections introduce zeppelins and survey the scholarly work at the intersection of the scholarship on globalization, nationalism, and food culture. I will then present a history of zeppelins as interwoven with that of the history of aviation in Lithuania in the first half of the 20th century. Next, I will briefly explain how zeppelins became a popular food under socialism and examine how the dish has been rebranded in post-socialist contexts. The closing section will reflect on national cuisine and its peculiar relationship to technology, and its renewed claims to authenticity. 2 Anthropology of East Europe Review 29(2) Fall 2011 Briefly About Zeppelins Lithuania’s national food is cepelinai. Translated as “zeppelins,” this dish usually consists of two large potato dumplings filled with minced meat or farmer’s cheese, and served in a fatty bacon sauce. For Lithuanians, zeppelins are a symbol of Sunday afternoon dinners with families as well as other social gatherings bringing together the kin and guests from different corners of the country and the world around one table. In today’s fast growing restaurant chains, zeppelins have also become the centerpiece of ethnic menus. One of the locally acclaimed restaurants in Vilnius now boasts serving twelve kinds of zeppelins that are designed to capture the subtleties of different regional and family traditions in zeppelin making. Zeppelins are the centerpiece dish on the national restaurant menus and are often served in dishes that are decorated in Lithuanian national motifs. Picture taken by Sigitas Mince at the Kampas, a restaurant in downtown Marijampole, on November 5, 2011. What is peculiar about zeppelins as a national dish is that neither its key ingredient (the potato) nor its name (originating from the German airship built in the early 20th century) have much to do with what one expects to constitute “authentic” Lithuanian foods and traditions. Indeed, potatoes were accepted into the homes of the Baltic peasantry only in the early-19th century; previous to that local diets were dominated by grains, dairy, fish, and meats grown on the farms, or berries, nuts, and wild game (Dunduliene 1963). To claim that the potato has historically been “the queen of Lithuanian kitchens” (“Lietuvos Valgiai” [“Lithuanian Foodways”] 2006:11), as argued in one magazine marketing Lithuania to foreign investors, is to gloss over the long and painstaking history of potato adaptation in East Europe and around the world (Zurekman 1999, O’Grada 1999, Woodham-Smith 1962, Smith

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